Mighty Apple takes some lumps from the Nasdaq stock exchange over a delayed …

Not even market high-profile darlings are safe from regulatory problems these days. Apple has found more "irregularities" in its stock option accounting practices than expected, and is working on restatements of several years of financial data as a result. That has delayed its quarterly financial report filing with the SEC, and the Nasdaq stock market has sent Apple a formal notice of delisting from the stock exchange.

The good news is that such notices are a dime a dozen, and the actual delisting can be avoided in a number of ways. Apple has requested a panel hearing to appeal the delisting, a process that normally takes a few months to complete, and the company could finish its restatements and file the 10-Q form to get back into compliance before the hearing. Happens all the time, just not often to such a well-known company.

The option trouble relates to the practices of backdating and springloading, two methods to juice the value of stock option grants. To backdate an option is to set the grant date to a convenient time when the share price was nice and low, so that exercising the option produces a fat capital gain. Springloading achieves the same effect, but in a different manner: options are granted right before planned events that are expected to boost the stock price significantly.

Apple's issues reportedly stretch back to 1997, and it's no mean feat to restate nine years of detailed financial reports, each one affecting the numbers on the next. Krispy Kreme started a similar process in the spring of 2004, and has yet to file a single quarterly report within a year of the due date. In other words, Apple may have this Sword of Damocles hanging over it for a while, although this company has greater resources and a much larger base of investors to answer to. The stakes are higher, and I'd expect Apple's management to burn the midnight oil until the accounting issues are worked out and the company can show the goods to the Nasdaq.

Some observers think that Steve Jobs may be forced out of his post at Apple, but that would certainly not be in the company's—or investors'—best interest. This is no longer a trifling matter, but there's also no reason to panic quite yet. Apple isn't going out of business. At worst, it may be forced to trade on the less-prestigious Bulletin Boards for a while, but even then it will eventually come back. And the next-generation iPod or whatever comes after the Mac Pro likely won't be affected much by these shenanigans. Still, the sooner the storm blows over, the sooner Steve and his crew can refocus on the future of the business.